SHIHNAN [ENSHI], Diocese of. - In the southern part of the province of Hupeh, in central China. It was erected as an apostolic vicariate on 14 June 1938 with 5 civil subprefectures of the apostolic vicariate of Ichang and was entrusted to the Chinese secular clergy; on 11 Apr. 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, it was elevated to a diocese suffragan of Hankow.
It has an area of 7500 sq km. As of 30 June 1947, out of a population of about 1,500,000 inhabitants, Catholics numbered 7850 and catechumens 220; the Chinese priests were 9 and the foreign ones 5, with 5 major and 13 minor seminarians; the sisters were 38, all Chinese. Among the works were 2 orphanages, 3 medicine dispensaries, 15 schools.
The first Christian propaganda, begun in 1864, from occasional contacts of Christian families of Szechawan with pagan families of Tse-lo in the civil subprefecture of Li-chuan, in the territory of S., was cultivated by a catechist sent to Tse-lo in 1865 and then, the following year, by a Chinese priest who came from Ichang and who founded a solid Christian community, despite the open and violent opposition of the pagans. In the same years the Christian community in the city of S. was founded through the work of another Chinese priest, the rev. Gioacchino Lo, who, having been subjected to the violence of a pagan faction, moved to Ien-goshan, where he founded a second Christian community, whose neophytes accepted with heroic fidelity the confiscation of their goods and exile in 1882. These first seeds were developed by the pp. Teotimo Verhagen, later bishop and apostolic vicar, and Fiorenzo Robberecht, who with p. Federico Verhagen, brother of Teotimo, and with 5 Christians were martyred in the persecution of 1904, which moreover led to a more rapid spread of the faith also in the civil subprefectures of Suen-guen and Laifung.
Bibliography2 works
Adamo Pucci